Blood Debts

CHAPTER 3 — ASHES IN THE SYSTEM

Valemont City woke to chaos. News anchors didn’t even try to hide their excitement. “Unconfirmed reports suggest the mysterious leak targeting D’Lorne Industries came from inside the corporation…”

Every channel repeated it, each headline louder than the last. By mid-morning, the words MAYFORD FILE had begun trending, a ghost from a case no one remembered until now.

In a small office above an old printing press, Fredricks watched the feed play across six monitors. Silas stood behind him, arms crossed. “You pulled too hard on the thread,” Silas muttered.

“It had to move sometime,” Fredricks said.

“Now the whole city’s watching you move.”

“Good.” He turned slightly. “Let them look. While they stare here, I’ll be somewhere else.”

He typed a string of commands. One screen blinked to an archived database labeled VPD Cold Case / Fire — 2008.

The file opened, revealing burned text, half-redacted. A single line remained intact: Survivor – Identity Unknown (Male, Age ≈ 10–12).

Fredricks leaned back, jaw tight. “There was another kid that night.”

“Or someone wants you to believe that,” Silas said.

“Either way, I need to find him before D’Lorne does.”

Across town, Victor D’Lorne’s private office looked more like a war room. Screens tracked social media storms, stock tickers, and satellite pings. “Find who opened that file,” Victor snapped.

“Sir, the trace leads to a municipal server. It’s decades old.”

“Then someone cleaned their tracks well,” he said, rubbing his temple. “Which means it’s him.”

Cassandra stood near the window, silent, unreadable. Victor finally turned to her. “You saw him. What did you feel?”

“Control,” she said after a pause. “Like he already knew how the conversation would end.”

“He wants you curious. Don’t give him that satisfaction.”

“Too late,” she murmured.

Victor ignored the comment. “He’s chasing ghosts. Let him. By the time he finds one, he’ll have nowhere left to hide.”

Later that day, Cassandra sat in her car at the edge of Old Quarter, listening to a recording of their café meeting. She replayed his words: ‘Someone your father should remember.’

The tone had been steady, but underneath, something wounded. Her phone buzzed: a text from an unknown number.

Unknown: You’re not safe in your father’s tower. Meet me where the city forgets itself.

She stared at the message. A single letter signed it. M. “He wants me to come to him,” she whispered.

Her assistant’s voice came through the earpiece. “Should I alert security?”

“No,” Cassandra said softly. “If he wanted me harmed, he wouldn’t have asked.”

She started the car. Rain began to fall again, thin, precise, like the tick of a clock counting down.

The address led her to an abandoned warehouse on the river’s edge. Inside, faint light glowed through dust and metal. A table stood at the center, two chairs facing each other. On one, a small box. On the other, silence.

Fredricks stepped from the shadows. “You came alone.”

“You asked politely,” she replied. “Most people ignore politeness these days.”

“Most people don’t make me curious.”

He nodded toward the box. “That’s yours.”

She opened it cautiously. Inside lay an old photograph, her father, younger, standing beside another man. The second man was Fredricks’s father.

Behind them, a third figure barely visible, a child, half-turned away. “You kept this?” she asked.

“It was sent to me last night. By someone who wants both of us looking in the same direction.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s a third player in this game, Ms. Vale. And whoever they are, they’ve been waiting longer than I have.”

The sound of distant sirens echoed closer. Silas’s voice crackled over Fredricks’s earpiece. “You’ve been followed. Multiple vehicles.”

Fredricks’s eyes narrowed. “How many?”

“Enough to call it a party.”

He turned to Cassandra. “You wanted the truth? It’s coming through that door.”

The warehouse lights flickered once, plunging them into dim blue shadow. The warehouse held its breath. Rain ticked against the roof like a heartbeat.

Cassandra stood near the table, phone forgotten in her hand. Fredricks was a few paces away, listening to the faint hum in his earpiece.

Outside, tires hissed on wet pavement, stopping too cleanly to be casual. “They’re here,” Silas whispered through static.

“How many exits?” Fredricks asked quietly.

“Two. Both compromised.”

“Then we make a third.”

He clicked the pocket-watch shut and slipped it into his coat. The sound was soft, but final. “You planned this?” Cassandra demanded.

“I plan everything. The question is, did your father plan you being here?”

“You think he’d sacrifice me?”

“I think he already has.”

A door creaked. The silhouette of a man stepped inside, framed by flashing lights from the street. Then another. They didn’t shout or draw weapons, they just waited. Silent professionals.

Fredricks tilted his head, studying them. “Not his regular men,” he murmured.

“Who then?” Cassandra asked.

“Someone cleaning up both sides.”

The figures moved closer. Fredricks motioned for Cassandra to stay still. Then, calm as a man ordering coffee, he called out: “Tell your employer they chose the wrong ghosts to chase.”

A voice answered from the shadows, cool and unfamiliar. “We didn’t come for you, Mayford. We came for her.”

Cassandra stiffened. Fredricks turned slightly, shielding her. “Then your employer didn’t give you the full file.”

He lifted his wrist; the pocket-watch face caught a beam of light. A small red diode blinked beneath the cracked glass.

The lights overhead dimmed, then flared, shorting out. When sight returned, the intruders were gone. Only the echo of retreating footsteps remained.

Cassandra exhaled. “What was that?”

“A message,” Fredricks said. “Someone else is protecting you.”

“Protecting me? From you?”

“From your father.”

He opened the photograph again and pointed at the blurred child behind their fathers. “That’s the second survivor. Your father’s been erasing him for years.”

“Why?”

“Because the boy wasn’t from my family,” he said quietly. “He was from his.”

Cassandra’s hand flew to her mouth. “You’re saying”

“You had a brother, Cassandra. Lost before you could remember. He was there the night my family died.”

Her eyes filled with disbelief. “That’s impossible. My father would’ve”

“Would’ve what?” Fredricks cut in. “Told you the truth?”

Thunder rolled somewhere over the river, muffling the silence that followed. Silas’s voice broke through again.

“Fredricks, you need to move. Someone else just tapped the municipal servers. Same encryption pattern as yours.”

“The survivor,” Fredricks said.

“Or the one who made him.”

Cassandra looked at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means the game just got a new player.”

She took a shaky breath. “And you expect me to trust you now?”

“No,” he said. “I expect you to listen.”

He handed her a small drive. “Everything your father buried. Names, dates, transactions. Keep it close, and don’t let anyone, including me, trace it.”

“Why give it to me?” she asked.

“Because I want you to decide what to believe when this all collapses.”

Outside, engines roared to life again, dozens this time. Silas’s voice rose, urgent. “They’re converging on your position. You’ve got sixty seconds.”

Fredricks looked at Cassandra. “Do you trust me enough to run?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Everyone has a choice. Some just wait too long to make it.”

He took her hand, led her through a side door and into the rain-slick alleys. As they disappeared into the maze of lights and fog, the camera mounted in the warehouse blinked red.

On the other end of the feed, in a dark control room, an unseen figure watched them go. A faint voice, distorted through the speaker, whispered: “He’s still alive… and he’s got her. Just like before.”

A second voice, smooth, calm, dangerous, replied: “Then let them run. Every predator leads us to the real prey.”

The monitor zoomed in on the photograph left behind on the table. Under infrared light, new writing appeared across the bottom edge: “Truth burns brighter than vengeance.”

— A.M. The feed cut to black.